The Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury is a serious of short stories about the colonization of Mars. The fourth expedition discovers that most Martians have gone extinct due to chicken pocks. But how would the book be different if all the Martians survived? Maybe if the Martians had survived, a longer history of conflict between the humans and Martians would have unfolded, just like when the Europeans colonized the Americas.

The intentions Martians had towards humans, which to get rid of all of them, became clear with the failures of the first three expeditions. Not only did the Martians kill the first humans that came to mars, they showed their advanced mental ability and how they can easily and quickly use it as an advantage against humans, especially during the third expedition. Thus, it is easy to infer the only reason the fourth expedition was successful, was due to the Martians being dead in the area where they landed (and lots of other areas).

Now, the Martian Chronicles events can and has been closely compared to the Europeans colonizing the Americas, such as disease (small pox) that killed most native Americans. Although, they didn’t go extinct as many survived and kept living on their tribe’s land. Then, the battles and alliances between natives and settlers stayed prevalent for hundreds of more years. Although, since the Europeans had better intellect and weaponry, they were able to subdue the natives and take their land on many occasions.

If more Martians were able to survive the epidemics like the native Americans did, I don’t believe the same battles and alliances explained above would have occurred based off the first chapters of the book. This is my opinion because the first chapters show the immense superiority of the Martians to humans, even more so than the Europeans to native Americans, through telepathy and shape shifting. Thus, the more people that came to Mars would most likely be killed by the Martians in various ways, just like the first three groups of explorers that went. Although, chapters later in the book, such as The Off Season, shows peaceful interaction between a human and a few Martians. Despite the peaceful nature, the Martians gave useless land to a human after the Martians were pretty much extinct, which didn’t make a strong alliance by any means.

Hostile conflict, however, is easy to predict if the Martians survived, especially when humans started coming in big waves when Earth was in a nuclear war. If the Martians did survive, there would be lots of humans and Martians on Mars. This would start a large conflict, considering the arrival of few humans caused the Martians to kill them immediately. Also, most humans that came to Mars in the book couldn’t bring much with them, so they would be unprepared for any battle with the Martians, which would give the Martians more of an advantage over the human refugees.

In conclusion, if the Martians had survived, a lot more conflict between the Martians and humans would take place, possibly causing the human population to go extinct instead of the Martians. Maybe this theoretical outcome would have been better because the Martians weren’t ruining their planet like the humans.